


you know, I could stay here all night

by gooseberry



Series: Listen to the Never [10]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: F/F, Female Ignis Scientia, Female Noctis Lucis Caelum, Grief/Mourning, Heartbreak, Post-Fall of Insomnia (Final Fantasy XV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-29
Updated: 2020-02-29
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:55:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22949692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gooseberry/pseuds/gooseberry
Summary: “He knew,” she snarls. “He knew what he was doing, he knew the whole time, and he just—he just smiled and he sent me away, and he never said—why wouldn’t he havesaid—”“I imagine,” Ignis says with care, “that he did what he thought was best—”“Best? How could this—” Noct’s voice breaks, and the next breath she draws in sounds like a sob. “I don’t know how this could be the best. He was supposed to— I was going to comehome.”
Relationships: Noctis Lucis Caelum/Ignis Scientia
Series: Listen to the Never [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1089999
Comments: 1
Kudos: 16





	you know, I could stay here all night

**Author's Note:**

> For a '100 words of falling asleep inside someone' prompt.

Noct is sitting in the backseat of the Regalia, her feet pulled up onto the seat and her arms wrapped around her drawn up knees. She looks little and miserable—she looks breakable. Ignis wishes she could give her more time and more space, but Ignis has already given Noct hours to sit by herself, and the world won’t wait for Noct, no matter how much Ignis wants it to. She opens the rear passenger-side door and slides into the backseat, shutting the door behind her. 

“I don’t want to talk about it,” is what Noct says, and Ignis answers, “I know.”

Tonight, though, what Noct wants and what Noct needs are different things, and even Noct seems to be aware of that.

“He knew,” she snarls. “He knew what he was doing, he knew the whole time, and he just—he just smiled and he sent me away, and he never said—why wouldn’t he have _said_ —”

“I imagine,” Ignis says with care, “that he did what he thought was best—”

“Best? How could this—” Noct’s voice breaks, and the next breath she draws in sounds like a sob. “I don’t know how this could be the best. He was supposed to— I was going to come _home_.”

They are all hurting, Ignis thinks, but some of them are hurting more than others. Ignis’s own family is most likely dead, particularly her uncle, and there is a peculiar kind of loss to it, like she’s stumbling over a final stair she wasn’t expecting. When she thinks that she’ll never see them again—her parents and her siblings and her uncle—it feels like there is a hollow space being bored through her. 

She doesn’t know how to imagine a future without her family—how to imagine the weeks and months and years to come. She doesn’t know how to think of never seeing her uncle again. All she has now is Noct and Gladio and Prompto; three people out of a city of thirteen million. 

She’s still deciding what she should say and what she should do—whether she should scoot across the seats to lean close, or if she should reach out—when Noct takes the decision from her, lunging across the backseat of the Regalia. She throws herself over Ignis’s lap, shoving her face in against Ignis’s belly, and Ignis can feel her shirt grow warm and damp beneath Noct’s face. 

The hollow in her stomach is growing wider, and Ignis wonders if Noct will be able to fill it; she hopes that Noct will be able to fill it. 

“This isn’t how anything’s supposed to go.” Noct’s words are muffled by Ignis’s belly and by the tears in her voice. 

Ignis lets herself touch Noct’s hair, smoothing it back from Noct’s wet, tearstained face as she says, “I know, Noct.”

Maybe Noct is crying enough for the both of them. She’s better at it than Ignis is, the way she takes her heartache and lays it out over Ignis’s lap like an offering: _Look, this is how my heart’s been broken. Do you want to see?_

Ignis doesn’t understand that kind of heartbreak. Her heartbreaks have always been silent, jealous things, a sour bitterness in her belly that she covets. She doesn’t know how to share it, not even with Noct; especially not with Noct. Noct has so much of her heart already, and this—in things like this—Ignis wants to keep at least this to herself, these shattered heartbreaks that are gouging out her secrets parts. 

Noct falls asleep there, in the backseat of the Regalia: still lying across Ignis’s lap, her arms wrapped around Ignis’s waist and her face tucked against Ignis’s belly. Ignis curls her hand around the delicate curve between Noct’s skull and neck, her thumb resting against the soft skin behind Noct’s ear. It’s quiet here, in the Regalia; the back windows are fogged from their breath, and the air feels close and stuffy.

Maybe it’s like being in a womb, some warm, dark place where they can curl up and rest; a place they can sleep without the immediacy of expectations. Maybe this is a place where they can rest, and maybe Ignis can at least give Noct this—a few hours to cry and to sleep and to try to learn how to live without her father or her city or her kingdom.


End file.
